Opinion – Renata Mendonça: Who is interested in a Brazilian Championship with reserves?

We arrived at the 26th round of this year’s Brazilian Championship with the same discussion on the agenda: the exhaustive schedule of games and its effects on the teams in dispute.

It became a recurring topic in the coaches’ conferences. But the theoretical discussion of the problem of such a tight schedule of games has perhaps never had as much practical effect as this season.

It is true that in 2020 we saw teams going to the field very disfigured due to the absence of Covid-19 outbreaks in the squad. But in 2022, what we are seeing throughout the entire championship, from the first round, are teams saving players to avoid the maximum wear and tear of those who have to take the field practically every Wednesday and every Sunday since June.

Every weekend, we create great expectations about clashes between the country’s top teams in the Brazilian Championship and, suddenly, in most of them, we see teams entering the field without maximum strength because they need to preserve the best players for the knockout tournaments. .

We recently had a Palmeiras x Flamengo, a direct confrontation between leader and vice-leader, in which the carioca club had a lineup with only three players from the team considered holder. Last Sunday, we had a classic the size of São Paulo x Corinthians with Rogério Ceni sending a reserve team to the field.

I don’t know if it’s the exception or the rule, because it would be worth mentioning at least one or two games per round since the beginning of the championship in which one of the teams involved didn’t take to the field with its maximum strength in the Brazilian.

Corinthians coach Vítor Pereira was criticized for sending a mixed team to the field against Palmeiras in the first round (losing 3-0) when there was a Libertadores game in the middle of the week. Dorival Júnior has been questioned at Flamengo for the decision to spare its main players in the Brasileirão games while seeing the distance to the leader, Palmeiras, increase. Will next Sunday’s Fla-Flu have full force?

Internacional, currently runner-up, entered an alternative team in the game against Fortaleza (losing 3-0) to preserve its maximum strength for the Sudamericana. Atletico-MG, which today is not named as a candidate for the title, but was at the beginning of the competition, also chose to leave Hulk and other holders out of Brazilian games, focusing on the midweek tournaments (Libertadores and Copa do Brasil) . Palmeiras was the one who least did this throughout the competition. Even when the Série A started, he even spared the main team in the first phase of Libertadores to count on maximum strength in the games of the national competition.

Of the teams that currently occupy the G6 of the Brasileiro, Palmeiras and Fluminense (the latter eliminated from the Sudamericana in the first phase, so with a little more time to breathe between games) were the ones that spared the least players in competition matches. All the others made “concessions”, not because they thought this would be the best strategy, but because it appeared to be the only possible strategy to survive the Brazilian football calendar.

In the most decisive phase of the season, only two teams resisted the three competitions. Flamengo and São Paulo have been playing every Wednesday and every Sunday since July, without even having a week break.

My impression is that this was the way coaches found to shout what they’ve been trying to communicate for years. The football calendar here is unfeasible. And who is interested in having a Brazilian Championship for reserves? The CBF sees its product weakening, the TV broadcasts games of alternative and unconfigured teams, and the consequence of this is that the fans will end up getting the message: the midweek tournaments are really important, the Brazilian is just “the rest” .

The debate is more than urgent, it is a matter of survival.